Disclaimer: We do not own Harry Potter or any of the Harry Potter characters, and we make no profit from this story.

A/N: Hello friends and followers! I've been doing some thinking, and some talking with my other writers, and we've decided that I'm going to take over America's Calling on a permanent basis. In honor of the move to my personal ErisAceso profile, I've started editing, and rejigging some of the earlier chapters, as well as continuing to write the rest of the story. It's been planned, plotted, and the current is strong - so I hope to finish it soon! Head on over to my profile and follow along as I re-release America's Calling, 1-2 chapters every week until it's finished, with supplementary content in the existing chapters. Can you spot the additions? Love you all! Xoxo Eris

CANNOT BELIEVE I FORGOT! Much love to RooOJoy - the inspiration of this story, and the best alpha reader and beta a girl could ask for. Also HUGE kudos to GeminiaWow author of the beloved Cassie Zabini as well as many, many others (regular plunny farmer, that one!). Thank you ladies for introducing me to writing, and giving me a love I never knew I needed!

Chapter 24 ~ Revelations ~

Kate beat Harry back to the room. She changed into the pair of pyjamas she'd received for Christmas, sat at her vanity and began taking off her make up, starting her usual bedtime routine. How could he keep this from me? she thought to herself, the words seeming to float across her mind on an endless loop. Snorting ungraciously, she realized that she didn't even know what 'this' was, she just knew that he'd kept something from her. Something big.

As she was pondering the state of her relationship and what Harry's motivations could have possibly been to lie to her this way, Harry himself walked in the room. He closed the door behind him, and then leaned back on the door, both of his hands still behind his back, locked on the door handle with a vice-like grip. He watched her carefully, taking in the way she was holding herself; outwardly calm, but the tension in her neckline and shoulders sang a different tune, as did the firmness in her smile and glint in her gaze.

"Kate, can we talk?"

"Oh sure, Harry. Let's talk," she said, gently setting down the brush she'd been using to comb out her hair, turning on the bench and crossing her legs demurely, folding her hands on her lap.

"Don't say it like that, love. I've wanted to talk to you about it, I just… couldn't. How do you tell someone you're just getting to know, and falling in love with, all at the same time, that you're a child of war - that you were at the center of it? It's not something you just come up with over tea!"

"Actually, yes, it is. It is, when you trust the person on the other side of the table enough to know the most important things about you. It is, when you love the other person enough not to hide an entire part of yourself!" She'd started out speaking with an entirely reasonable tone, but the farther she got into her statement, the more emotional she became, until she whipped back around to hide her tears.

Perfectly capable of seeing them in the mirror, Harry felt absolutely retched.

"Kate, please. I wasn't trying to lie to you; it wasn't about trust, or lack thereof! Everywhere I've ever gone, everyone has known who I am. People have asked for autographs while I was shopping for trousers for Merlin's sake, and all for what ended up being one of the worst moments of my life. Then, this madman comes out of the woodwork, determined to kill me and my mentor sends me off to confront him… This was the most powerful wizard of our time, Kate. And I was an eleven year old boy," Harry finished quietly, looking at the floor.

"Go on…"

"Voldemort killed my parents, and he tried to kill me, but the Avada backfired leaving me with the scar on my forehead, and killing him," Harry started, eager to get the telling over with.

"I thought you said that was from a quidditch accident?" Kate asked, brow raised.

"Dammit, Kate, stop looking at me like that!"

"Like you lied to me?" she asked innocently.

"Like I did it to hurt you. Intentionally!"

"But you did lie to me, intentionally. You lied to me, you covered up your past and you did it consistently for months. How could you have possibly thought that it wouldn't hurt me?"

"I… I knew it would hurt, alright? But you don't understand, you couldn't possibly understand!" Harry yelled, starting to pace in front of the door.

"Try me," Kate snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.

"This is the first time I've ever made a friend who didn't know that I'd survived the darkest wizard ever known to man. This is the first time someone has started talking to me, and kept talking to me, because of who I am as a person. Rather than what happened to me as an infant, or as an eleven year old facing his disembodied soul, or as a fifteen year old when I watched a friend die, but survived his return yet again… Or as a seventeen year old, when I killed him in front of a crowd of people."

Kate stared at Harry blankly, as the weight of what he was saying sank in. He thought he could see the weight of it being placed on her shoulders as he watched them sag a little. I'd give anything to take that weight back, Harry thought with complete and utter anguish.

Seeing the look of pain on Harry's face, Kate moved across the room, grabbing both of his hands in hers. "What? What just happened there Harry?"

"I could see it, the weight of what I've done, what I've told you, dragging you down. I'd give anything to take it all back and keep it so that you didn't have to know about any of it!" he yelled, frantic with need.

"I don't feel heavier Harry, I feel lighter," Kate insisted, grabbing his face with both of her hands so that he couldn't look away. "Don't you understand that this puts so many things about you in perspective? You guys told me so little when I found the scar on Hermione's arm, and when I saw Draco's mark. None of it made sense. Now? Everyone looking to you in a crisis, the way you all seem like you're completely on edge all of the time. Do you even realize that you guys walk together, so that no one's back is ever exposed? Watching you guys play laser tag was one of the most harrowing and frankly, frightening, experiences of my entire life - and I've driven with Jake!" Kate said, trying to lighten the mood, but Harry was having none of it.

"Harry, knowing this about you doesn't change how I see you, or how much I love you. It just lets me love you completely, and understand all of you, not just the parts you've chosen to show me. Let me love you Harry…"

With that Kate grabbed Harry by the hand, and led them to her vanity, where she made quick work of running a brush through his hair, and divesting him of his clothes before taking him to bed. It was in the middle of their love making, when Harry realized that she'd been right. As he watched her come apart around him, her hair framing her face as she rode him softly, slowly, he realized that this was the witch he'd been waiting for. He'd heard once that at birth, the human soul was split into three pieces; one to remain in you, keeping you alive and in search of the other two. The second to be put into your best friend - someone you could trust with your deepest secrets, The third to be put into your one true love, the one you could trust with your deepest secrets and your heart. He'd thought a long time ago that he'd found one third of his soul in Hermione - the one witch in his life who called him on his shit, but never judged, or dismissed him. He knew now that he'd found the last third in the woman who'd heard his worst secrets, caught his heart and was carefully guarding both like they were her most precious possessions. How did he know? He'd never felt more complete in his entire life.

OoOoO

Elsewhere in the Mills Mansion, Theo, Ben and Pansy had just finished telling the whole sordid tale to Ben, who was taking it rather badly.

"You mean to tell me, that your… headmaster?" he paused, looking for clarification to make sure he had this right.

"Yeah, sort of like your Dean Carter, only about a million times more terrifying and a smidge more crazy, if I'm honest," Theo said flippantly.

"Your headmaster, the person who was supposed to be in charge of your emotional and physical well-being, sent an eleven year old boy to fight a disembodied, terribly evil wizard, who was trying to get his hands on his own reincarnation. Then, he left him to delve into a secret chamber with a fifty foot basilisk armed with nothing but a bird and a bloody magical hat to defend himself against yet another reincarnation of same said terribly evil wizard?"

"That about sums up first and second year, yeah. Well done mate!" Theo said, clapping Ben on the back. Ben, not even remotely amused, held up his finger indicating he was not quite finished.

"In your third year, this same headmaster knew that, what he assumed was a mass murderer, was looking for Harry, that he'd been in the castle where you lived, and he did nothing. Only to bend time to try and fix it. As if that weren't enough, we have the completely mental TriWizard Tournament that pitted a bunch of students against: dragons, a lake full of untold horrors, and a maniacal maze. Only to have the prize at the end of it be a portkey to the graveyard, where yet again, the terribly evil wizard could be found, who then slit Harry open and basically came back from the dead, but not before killing one of your classmates. Have I got that right?"

"Mmmhmmm, doesn't sound to me like you've missed anything - though when you summarize it that way it does seem completely insane," Theo said looking at Pansy for confirmation.

"Seems insane!?" Ben shouted, completely at a loss for how casual they seemed to be about it all. Looking for Pansy for some sort of reassurance, she took pity on him and came to sit in his lap, stroking her hand through his hair.

"Hold onto your hat love, it's not over yet…" she murmured in his ear, holding his hand and motioning for Theo to continue.

"Right, so, in our fifth year, Harry was telling everyone that he was back and our government basically called him a liar, had our headmaster removed from his position while installing the most terribly evil woman in his place. This woman took away any sense of freedom we had, used a cursed quill to give us lines to write in our own blood, and in the end went completely batshit, even willing to use unforgiveables on students."

Ben was about to interject, his eyes bugging out widely when Pansy slapped a hand over his mouth, murmuring calming things in his ear and then finally threatening to get a calming draft to drug him with if he didn't let Theo finish.

"In our last year, the terribly evil wizard came back with all of his evil followers, attacked us all at school, and tried to kill Harry. Harry, ever the self-sacrificing idiot had been on the run with Ron, the guy you met earlier, and Hermione, trying to kill the horcruxes that Voldemort had created. Now…"

But Ben couldn't control himself, or his curiosity. "You said, Horcrux-es, you mean he had more than one?" he demanded, incredulous.

"Yeah, Potter said he had seven… well, then we found out that he really had eight because he'd made Harry one by accident when he tried to murder him when he was a kid," Theo said off-handedly, getting lost in the details. "No matter, don't rush me, I'm getting there!"

Unable to think of anything productive to say, or do, Ben simply sat there, his mouth gaping open like a deranged fish.

"So, when Harry found out the last horcrux was at school, he came back, destroyed it, then set about trying to kill the snake, which he thought was the last one. Then, he found out from our potions professor that he was the last horcrux, so he went to the terribly evil wizard to let him kill it."

"Kill it!?" Ben screeched, losing his cool completely. "But, he would have had to kill Harry! What the fuck was he thinking!?"

"See mate, now we're on the same page! I thought the same thing, and apparently so did Ron and Hermione, because they were right pissed when he went off to the forest to meet him by himself…"

"By… himself? Harry… Harry faced off against the darkest wizard of your age, by himself, knowing full well that he had to… die?" Ben asked quietly, too stunned at what he was hearing to even be mad. He felt an overwhelming grief for all of the terror and suffering that they'd all had to go through, but the agony he felt on behalf of Harry who'd had to stare down the scariest thing a person could face. Well, it was indescribable.

"Yeah, he did," Theo said, completely sober now. Even he couldn't maintain any sort of levity when he thought about what Potter had done to try and save them all. The amount of guts that would take… He didn't think he'd have had them, and wasn't afraid to admit it. "He walked into the woods knowing he was going to die, and he did it to save the bloody world."

"That's… that's insane!" Ben said, looking at them both. "How could any of this have happened? You were just kids!"

"I know, love," Pansy said, rubbing his back in comfort. She had lived the story and couldn't imagine having 'walked-in' on it so to speak. It truly was horrifying when it was laid out from beginning to end. "Our potions master ended up being a double agent, who'd helped from the beginning. In the end, he provided Harry with the knowledge he needed to defeat Voldemort. Albus Dumbledore, who will go down in history as the man who started it all and helped end not just Grindelwald, but Voldemort as well, died on the astronomy tower the day that Draco let the death eaters into Hogwarts."

At this, Ben's face went pale and he looked at her aghast. He was completely terrified for the Pansy and Theo they had been in that moment. The Pansy and Theo who would've had to fight, to choose a side, knowing that it could very well mean their death. Even knowing they were right there in front of him, that they'd survived, he was still afraid. After the fear, came the rage. "How could Draco have done it?" he demanded, getting to his feet. "How could he have put you all in that place? How can you all be friends with him given… What. He's. Done!?"

Theo, willing to give him room to process, was not willing to give him this. "Don't," he said sharply, putting his hand on Ben's chest, preventing him from making a move for the door. So abrupt and jarring was the gesture that Ben felt like he'd run into a battering ram.

"What do you mean, don't?" Ben snapped, eager to get some answers, preferably from the death eater himself.

"I mean don't think that you could possibly understand everything that went on during that time based on the ten minute synopsis you've gotten from Pansy and me. We've left things out Ben, we've left a lot of things out. Like how the terribly evil wizard decided to take up residence in Draco's childhood home to direct his evil minions. How Draco was forced to become a death eater to save his epic fuck up of a father, and his truly formidable mother. How Voldemort set Draco the impossible task of killing, KILLING, our headmaster, one of the most impressive wizards on the planet, or else he and his family would lose their lives. You have no idea what you would do in that situation," Theo finished darkly, his face stony and ashen.

"I would never..." Ben started, renewing his attempts to get to the door.

This time it was Pansy that spoke in defence of their friend. "You'd like to think you wouldn't, but it's the gods' honest truth that you don't know that, Ben. We'd all like to think that we'll be completely stand up human beings in the face of unquestionable horrors, but the huge majority of us will do just what it takes to survive. It's people like Harry, like Hermione, and like bloody fucking Longbottom, that do the extraordinary. Because they're extraordinary people from the start. I was never that extraordinary Ben," she ended softly, looking at him, her emotions and her guilt laid bare.

"Neither was I," Theo stated baldly, daring Ben to question it and question it,he did.

"What the hell are you two talking about? You're the most extraordinary people I know!" he shouted at them.

"Are we? Can you honestly say that's true with what you now know about Harry, Hermione and Neville? Don't even get me started on Ginny who was underage when this all went down and still managed to stay in the fight…" Theo retorted, getting angry at his insistence that they were good people. "We don't have any stories of bravery Ben, we have stories of survival. We joined the Inquisitorial Squad because it meant we weren't on the receiving end, and maybe, just maybe we could lessen the pain that others suffered. We hid in dark corners, and taught others to hide like us - even the bloody Gryffindors who swore they would fight. We brought them down to our level, Ben, and we did it gladly."

Pansy nodded with every word, her head low with the guilt she was wearing like a crown, heavy on her head.

"What. The actual. Fuck." Ben spat, furious with the both of them. "Do you think that takes less courage? Do you think that sitting in the snake's lair, posing as one of them, but doing your best to dissent from within is… is…" He was gesturing widely, searching for the word he was looking for.

"Sneaky? Underhanded?" Theo tossed out, the words indicative of his self-loathing.

"Weak, Self-Serving?" Pansy added to the mix, not meeting Ben's eye.

Ben took this moment to punch Theo square in the jaw. Not waiting another heartbeat, he took Pansy by both shoulders and shook her, hard. Theo, used to taking one to the face, was up and grabbing Ben, barring both of his arms with his own in a giant bear hug from behind, muttering epithet after epithet while trying to drag him away from Pansy.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing you feckless twat? Don't you dare handle her that way!" Theo roared, shoving Ben so hard he fell against the wall in the corner of their room and taking a position that put himself between Ben and Pansy.

"I… I'm sorry," Ben started, collecting himself. He stood slowly, his hands raised in front of him to show he meant no harm, clearly trying to get his bearings. "I'd never hurt Pansy, Theo. You know that, don't you?" he asked quietly, looking at Pansy to see her nod, before looking to Theo and waiting.

"Then why did you put your hands on her?" Theo asked, his breathing still rough and haggard, his pupils dilated with adrenaline.

"I was desperate to make you two see sense, to snap you out of the spiral of self-loathing you've obviously been living in!" Ben said with more heat than he wanted. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. "What you two did was no less than what the others did just because it was less obvious. You inserted yourselves in the best places you possibly could to minimize harm and affect change when the time was right. There is nothing weak, or cowardly about that."

"We'll have to agree to disagree," Pansy said, turning from the two of them. Ben moved quickly toward Pansy until a growl from Theo had him freezing where he stood. Staring into his eyes, Ben let Theo see his true intentions in the pain and the need to comfort showing there. At a quick nod from Theo, Ben moved to wrap Pansy in his arms.

"No, we will not agree to disagree," Ben said softly, tilting her chin up so she would meet his eye. "What you did was brave, and in many ways selfless - even if your path gave you a few more creature comforts, for a longer period of time. You still helped people when you could, and you still chose the right side. That's brave, and I won't hear either of you talk shit about yourselves because of the way you chose to be brave."

Theo had turned on the room, seemingly choosing to look out the window, but Pansy knew better. She walked up to Ben and mouthed "Thank-you", before turning him and giving him a small shove in Theo's direction.

From far away, Ben couldn't have said what was wrong with the man in front of him, but as he grew closer, he could see the tremble, and the tell tale shakes of a man trying very, very hard not to cry out loud.

"It didn't feel brave," Theo choked out. "It felt selfish, like I was trying to cover my own ass!" He yelled it while looking at Pansy, seeing the understanding and agreement written all over her features. "We hid in plain sight, Ben. We didn't feel like we were planting ourselves in the enemy lines for the sake of good versus evil. We felt like it was our only option. It would have been suspicious for us to leave all together, and would have marked our families as traitors. So, we stayed, to protect ourselves and the ones we loved, not to protect anyone else!" he finished, his breath heaving.

"I think what Ben's trying to say is that, we protected our families by staying in harm's way, and that was brave. And then while in harm's way, we did our best to protect those around us when the opportunity arose – which was not in fact self serving because it kept our allegiances a secret, thus protecting our families, ourselves and allowing us to continue protecting those around us when the opportunity struck. And that all of that, is brave," she finished quietly, her voice reflecting the awe that she felt at seeing herself this way for the first time. She hadn't realized that she'd internalized a lot of what the wizarding people had to say about her and her fellow Slytherin classmates, who had remained at the castle and appeared to join the enemy ranks. A weight was lifted off of her very soul as she pondered the prospect that she wasn't in fact defined as a self-serving Slytherin, but that there was a little bit of the brave Gryffindor, the self-sacrificing Hufflepuff, and the wise Ravenclaw in her after all.

Theo however, was having a harder time assimilating this information, and was shaking his head violently, like he was trying to physically repel the words floating through his mind. "No, that's… that's not how it was for me," he said frantically, realizing that he no longer had Pansy's understanding.

"I… I didn't care about anybody, but me," he finally yelled, standing still like the statue he felt like he was becoming; devoid of emotion, with a concrete heart at the center.

"That's a damn lie," Pansy spat, her anger sparking. "You looked out for me that entire bloody year Theo, and then some. What about when Alecto caught me giving murtlap essence to that first year who'd had a go round with Umbridge? You told her that it was on your orders, that he couldn't very well go to the detention he had tomorrow with McGonagall if he looked the way he did. You got him and me out of trouble that day Theo, and if Alecto had suspected for a second that you were a liar and a traitor, she wouldn't have hesitated to crucio you until the end of time. You know it!"

Ben had come up behind Theo during Pansy's little diatribe, and now it was his turn to give Theo the bear hug he so desperately needed. Theo was thrashing in his arms, physically trying to reject the mercy that they were showing him he deserved, like his body and his mind were rejecting the information like a virus. It wasn't until Pansy joined Ben, and wrapped her arms around him, nestling her hands in the small of Theo's back, under the warm, firm belly of Ben, that Theo began to quiet. His tears still ran freely, but he was no longer fighting them; the tears, or his lovers.

"I… I was… brave?" he whispered, almost like he was afraid that they were going to take it all back.

"You were brave love, we all were," Pansy said, finally letting her own tears fall.

"Don't ever doubt it again," Ben murmured, planting a kiss on the back of Theo's neck. "Either of you," he added, making eye contact with Pansy.

Under the door a pair of extendable ears were slithering their way back to the person who held them, to be tucked back where they came from until the next time opportunity knocked.

OoOoO

Jake and Sarah were speaking quietly by the fire place in their 'adjoining salon', as Kate called it, when Ginny returned in her pyjamas, hair brushed, teeth squeaky clean and ready to sleep.

"What's this then?" she asked, gesturing to the tête-à-tête occurring on the other side of the room. As a unit, Jake and Sarah turned, hands clasped with very serious looks on their faces. "Well, I'm not going to like this, am I?" Ginny said, sitting on the chair in between the two of them.

"We think it's time you told us what you were talking about that day in the car when we were driving together. You told us that you had nightmares, and that it wasn't just your story to tell, but… well, it would seem that the cat's out of the bag, so we'd like to know too," Sarah said nervously, looking to Jake for reassurance. He gave her a quick smile and leaned down to place a chaste kiss on her cheek before looking at Ginny with the most open and sympathetic gaze she'd ever seen on a face.

Despite the reassurance, Ginny felt her heart beat increasing speed, and her palms were getting sweaty. Her breath wasn't coming as easily as it should have been, given the fact she was sitting and not chasing someone, or running for her life. Abruptly, her mind flashed back to a time when she had been running for her life and that of another.

She was at Hogwarts, in the middle of the battle. Death eaters and students dropping like flies all around her as curses and hexes flew like birds. She could see Fred and George duelling the Carrows, all smiles despite the insanity of the whole thing. Looking desperately for Harry, she'd barely taken the time to breathe, let alone pay attention to the carnage around her. It was when she heard a noise, a noise she had never heard come out of a human, coming from the corner. She turned and was running before her mind had even registered what had happened. The next events happened in a series of flashes, like her mind had refused to remember them in any particular sequence, and definitely not in their entirety. Flash. George holding Fred in his arms, keening and demanding he wake up. Flash. Her mother finding out Fred had died. Flash. Ron finding out Fred had died. Flash. Harry finding out Fred had died, along with Remus and Tonks.

She came to on the floor, sobbing. Her head was in Sarah's lap and Jake was pacing back and forth between the fireplace, his cheeks wet with tears. I wonder if he even knows that he's crying? she wondered, as she tried to pull herself together.

"I… I'm sorry, I don't know what that was," Ginny murmured, extracting herself from Sarah's lap, and curling up into the chair once more, preparing to tell her story.

"I'd say it was a flashback," Jake said, having come to a standstill, wiping his tear-stained cheeks and resting his hands on the hearth.

"Wh-what?" Ginny stammered, glancing back between Sarah and Jake. She couldn't see Jake's face, but if it matched Sarah's in any way, she wasn't sure she wanted to.

"A flashback. I've read about them in Muggle Studies. They were common after the Muggle first and second world wars. The people who fought in them frequently remembered horrific acts they had committed, or as in your case, people close to them being killed in action."

"How… How did you…?" Ginny was still stuttering, backing herself as far into the chair cushions as she could, making herself as small as she could.

"You were saying all of it out loud Gin," Sarah said softly, crawling on her knees so she could be closer to her. Ginny recoiled at her words, trying to move farther away, but finding herself trapped by the back of the chair.

"No… No, I wouldn't. I couldn't have!" she yelled, covering her face with her hands, breathing erratically.

Jake, hearing the obvious distress in her voice, turned then and walked towards her slowly, hand out. He motioned to Sarah to stop trying to physically comfort her, until he was sitting cross legged on the floor in front of Ginny.

"Ginny, love, you're OK. You're safe here – it's just Sarah and I! It's not a bad thing that you told that story. You haven't let go of some big secret. Remember, your brother Ron? He's here and he let slip that there was a lot more that went on back home than we knew, so you were about to tell us all about it anyway," he finished calmly, taking the opportunity to place his hand on her knee.

At his contact, with his words, Ginny felt herself calm; her heartbeat returned to something close to normal, and her breathing started to slow. Jake gave Sarah a nod, and she picked up Ginny's hand, linking their fingers together and kissing her hand.

"Are you OK now?" Jake asked, again. So calm, she thought.

"Yes I… I think so?"

"OK then, tell us, love."

"There's nothing more to tell really. I thought I loved Harry, but then he left me to protect me. I stayed in school and fought the people who sought to teach us all how to hate, how to torture, and how to kill one another. I helped Neville – he was the leader then, by creating as much organized chaos as I could, and secreting away willing and able students to the Room of Requirement."

"Room of Requirement?" Jake asked, intrigued by the term.

Ginny couldn't help but smile at the curiosity – this was her Jake. "Yeah, it was a magical room inside the castle that became whatever you needed it to be when you walked outside of it. For instance, if you're a young lady in trouble for setting a whizzing Frisbee after a professor who was taking it in turn to torture a pair of first years with an unforgiveable and need a place to hide, it supplies you one, in a hurry," she said wryly.

Sarah made an indistinct noise of distress and Jake pulled her to him, burying her face in his shoulder. "Go on," he encouraged.

"When it became clear we'd need a permanent hide out, one of us stayed constantly in the room, keeping it in the iteration that we needed. Of course, as our numbers expanded, so did the room. Teachers sent house-elves with food, and our Charms Professor – Professor Flitwick – he charmed a bell to sound outside of the corridor to warn us if someone was at the main entrance."

"Smart," Jake said, nodding his approval. Ginny continued.

"We just… survived. We saved as many as we could, as fast as we could, until one day Harry showed up. He was looking for something in the castle, and our friend Luna helped him find it. I lost him for a bit there, as he was running off destroying bits of the bastard's soul – which I only found out later. My… My brother Fred, George's twin? He died fighting in the war, along with several of my friends. Harry… he… he walked into the forest knowing he was going to die to try and save us all. Voldemort – that was his name made up for himself, but his real name was Tom Riddle – he walked into the courtyard with what we thought was a dead Harry. I swear I thought a piece of me died right then," she said softly, pausing to reflect.

"I don't doubt that," Sarah said, trying as hard as she could not to imagine it herself, and failing. "You loved him, and he died. That would be devastating." Ginny blushed at these words, not used to discussing her past relationship with Harry with the two people she was currently in a relationship with.

"I thought I loved him…" Ginny argued, tucking her hair behind her ears.

"No, you loved him Gin, and that's OK," Jake said, insistent. "The fact that you loved Harry when you were a teenager doesn't diminish the love you feel for us now. If anything, it means more, because you know what you're talking about," he said with a smirk, as always, trying to lighten the mood.

"Well, he wasn't dead, as you may have worked out," Ginny said with a smirk latching onto Jake's levity like it was a life line. "He shocked the hell out of us all, that's for sure, and he dueled that evil bastard until he was pushing daisies," she finished, the ending feeling fairly lame for what had been a momentous occasion.

"Pushing daisies?" Sarah asked, a brow raised in question.

"Yeah, snuffed. Kicked the bucket? Croaked, toast, bury him ass up, so you have a place to park your bike. I could go all day here…"

Jake couldn't help himself and he dissolved in a fit of epic laughter, rolling on the floor and holding his sides in as though he were fit to burst. The laughter was contagious, and soon Sarah and Ginny had both joined in, laughing until you could hear their ribs creaking from the door. As it died down, Jake grabbed both of their hands and pulled them so they were each sitting nestled into one of his shoulders.

"Nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again, Gin," he said resolutely.

"You can't know that Jake. No, you can't!" she said as she could feel him trying to protest. "We never thought what happened to us could happen, and it did. Tomorrow isn't promised, and it sure as hell isn't promised happy. One of the things that has gotten me through, besides a lot of firewhisky, is the idea that every single good day that I have offsets one of the bad ones. I plan to spend a long time making sure I have more good ones than bad ones on the grand old tally sheet, OK? That doesn't mean every day has to be picnics and shags in the pool…"

"Shagging in the pool? Never done that, we should give it a try. The Mills have a heated one in the back, you know…"

"Jake! So not the point!" Sarah said jabbing him with her elbow.

"Right, stay on track."

"It doesn't all have to be perfect, but any day where I get to spend it with the two of you, well… That's more than enough for me."

"Awwwe… you're so sappy!" Jake said, earning him not one, but two elbows in the ribs. Worth it for that smile on their faces, he thought to himself.

"Shut it," they both said, pushing him so he was lying flat and moving to place kisses on his neck.

"Yes ma'ams," he said, to the perfect sound of his women giggling.